Review + How-To: Sailor Dash for Android

Android Game Dev M-TAKE took the Play store by storm with their debut of Dragon Run Z, a game based not-so-loosely around Akira Toriyama’s smash hit anime Dragonball Z — and just five days after upload, the title’s sister game,Sailor Dash, debuted.

I stumbled across Sailor Dash by accident, and it was definitely the best mistake I’ve made as of recent. An action-based side-scroller, advancing in-game is based on both timing and usage of items. I’ve been playing for about half a week, and I still can’t get enough (I also still can’t beat the first boss, but, well, y’know). There have been a lot of questions on both twitter and the Play Store, so I wanted to whip up a quick and easy starter guide for beginners. Check below the guide for my review!

Sailor Dash is an action-adventure side-scrolling game for the Android mobile system by M-TAKE. The game’s concept is simple: as your Sailor Senshi progresses forward, you collect stars and items and defeat bosses. The game is free on the Android play store, is currently version 1.0.2., and has been downloaded over 10,000 times since it’s September 15th debut. I’ve been having tons of fun playing it, despite a few minor flaws. For the most part, the game runs smoothly (every once in a while during consecutive playthroughs, I’ll experience a second or two of lag) and delivers clean, cute graphics that somehow don’t push copyright boundaries too far. The game is only in Japanese, which was a little struggle at first, but it is fairly easy to learn after the first few playthroughs.

Right now, I can definitely say that there are two things that bug me a bit about the game:

Ads, ads, ads. Not only do they totally ruin the otherwise poppy and cute aesthetic of the game, but they make it a little hard to play (my finger slipped once or twice and hit an ad instead of my special attack). It’s forgivable – this game is free, after all.

The lack of the other senshi (it looks like you can play as all inner and outer scouts via the character select menu) but I feel like they’ll be added with updates or a paid version.UPDATE: Seems like the senshi are slowly trickling out via updates – you can now play as Sailor Mercury, who seems to have a higher health bar and heavier hit power than Sailor Moon. I think the developer might beef up Usagi in the future, though.

UPDATE: Just for now, it’s worth noting that when I play with Sailor Mercury, sometimes she freezes. She’ll keep moving forward on the map, but her animation will stop completely. This is probably just a bug that will get patched up with future updates.

Speaking of, I would absolutely pay for this game. It’s great to play on the go, but challenging enough to keep the player entertained after several plays. The course tends to randomize and throw new challenges at you. It doesn’t seem like there are different stages outside of the one available right now, but since virtually no one that I can hunt down has beaten the first few bosses, it might be a possibility.

All in all, I definitely recommend this game for anyone who has ever enjoyed Sailor Moon. The animation is cavity-inducing, the music isn’t massively annoying, and it’s not really that easy to find a Sailor Moon game on mobile that doesn’t come with several glitches and an uneven price tag. Get to punishing, moonies!